Monthly Archives: March 2018

Day 4 racing at the 2018 Bacardi Moth World Championship Bermuda has been postponed due to light winds.

A high-pressure system has replaced the low that buffeted the island earlier in the week. While it has brought sunshine and warm temperatures, it has also strangled the wind.

“We haven’t had an average of more than 5 knots so far today and we’re expecting it to continue to drop, so we’ve postponed today’s racing,” said David Campbell-James, the principal race officer.

Tomorrow is a scheduled lay day for the regatta because of the Good Friday holiday in Bermuda. Campbell-James said that the race committee would reconvene in the morning and if there is a promise of wind the fleet will take to the racecourse.

British sailor Paul Goodison, the reigning two-time world champion, leads the regatta with six points. Francesco Bruni of Italy holds second with 19 points and Rome Kirby of the U.S. is third with 23 points.

Day 3 – Bacardi Moth World Championship in Bermuda

Paul Goodison of the U.K., Francesco Bruni of Italy and Rome Kirby of the U.S. hold first, second and third, respectively, at the Bacardi Moth World Championship in Bermuda.

Today’s conditions were far more manageable than yesterday’s blow out. But even though the northwesterly blew at a more manageable strength of 12-to-18 knots many competitors still suffered breakdowns that had them scrambling.

Goodison’s forestay broke during tune-up which forced him to miss the first race of the day. Kirby discovered a crack in his main vertical foil just before docking out. And Iain Jensen of Australia was forced to retire from Race 6, the fourth of the day, when his mainsheet broke.

“The mainsheet broke just below the splice,” said Jensen, who finished 1-2-1 in the first three races of the day. “The worst part is that I now have two discards in my scoreline, both due to rigging failures.” Jensen holds 10th overall with 54 points.

Goodison, the reigning two-time Moth world champion, leads overall with 6 points. He gave credit to Brett Moss (Brad Funk’s coach) and his girlfriend, Giulia Elba Masotto, as well as the Maguire Boats shore team for helping fix his problem expediently.

“The forestay broke at the terminal halfway up the first tuning leg,” said Goodison. “It caused quite a bit of damage with the rig falling down and the boom getting tangled up in the fairings. Luckily, Brett and Giulia helped tow me back to shore and the Maguire Boats shore team helped get the rig out and a rope forestay in place.”

Goodison made it to the racecourse for the day’s second race, which he won, but his rigging problems persisted.

“The rope forestay kept stretching so in between Race 4 and 5 I had to go capsize the boat to try and tighten it and I missed the start of Race 5,” said Goodison.

Goodison estimates he started Race 5 30 to 40 seconds late and even though he wasn’t at 100 percent performance he kept gaining on Jensen throughout the race. The two blazed down the run to the finish line, with Goodison making big gains by sailing lower and faster. Jensen won the race, but only by one boatlength in the closest finish of the regatta to date.

Bruni catapulted into second overall by posting four third-place finishes. The veteran sailor pumped his fist after each race and was clearly ecstatic with his performance, even shouting “Yeah, baby!” after one race.

“I’m very, very happy. I could not expect more,” said Bruni. “Remember, I’m almost 45 years old so to be so consistent is not easy. I gave everything I had. I have to thank my son, Bobby, and my coach, Carlo de Paoli, for helping prepare me.”

Bruni pulled off the hero move of the regatta in Race 4, the second of the day, when he executed a port-tack start at the pin end. That is one of the riskiest starts in any race, but in the Moth class the degree of difficulty is 10 because the Moth is not easily tacked. Bruni did it not once, not twice but three times.

“I saw the right corner of the racecourse looked really good and the best way to get there was the port-tack start,” Bruni said. “Sail to the right corner and tack once to the windward mark. I have to minimize my tacks because, remember, I’m 45. It worked really well. I’m very, very happy with how I managed the day.”

Kirby was lucky to discover the crack in the vertical foil that is central to the Moth’s foiling ability. “If I hadn’t found the crack the foil probably would’ve broken during racing,” Kirby said.

While many in the fleet have new boats, new sails or new equipment, Kirby is sailing the same boat he’s had for the past three years. Before the regatta he took part in two week-long training sessions in Florida with Goodison, Funk and Victor Diaz de Leon. He credited that session and his knowledge of the area for helping with his performance.

“I’m just trying to be consistent, get off the start line in good shape and stay in the top 10 at the windward mark,” Kirby said. “The racecourse today was shifty and puffy at the top, it was tough. There is some geographical stuff that I’m aware of and that probably helped me pick off a few boats. But it’s tough. My legs are shaking from all the hiking. I can barely walk.”

Racing is scheduled to continue tomorrow with the wind strength forecast between 5 and 10 knots.

Bacardi Moth World Championship at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club

Paul Goodison of the UK took the early lead at the Bacardi Moth World Championship in Bermuda after winning the first two races on Great Sound.

Hosted by the Royal Bermuda yacht Club, the world championship got underway a day late after yesterday was blown out. Tuesday was on the hairy edge as the wind blew steadily between 18 and 22 knots with gusts nearing 30 knots. The conditions were challenging for the sailors but left some exhilarated.

“The conditions were on the edge, pushing everyone to the limits of what’s possible in the Moth,” said the 40-year-old Goodison, the two-time Moth world champion. “But it was fantastic. So many guys were rocking around with big smiles.”

“It was super windy and pretty hairy, but the water was flat enough to get around the racecourse,” said Victor Diaz de Leon of the U.S., unabashedly the shortest sailor in the fleet. “I’ve sailed in those conditions before but it’s rare. The Moth often makes you scared, but it’s fun when you’re scared. It was a blast.”

“After the first start the breeze built from fresh to frightening,” said Irishman Dave Kenefick. “It’s the windiest I’ve ever sailed a Moth in and I’d prefer not to do it again, but I got through unscathed.”

The conditions exacted a toll on the fleet. There were broken masts, broken rudders and broken controls. Although unscathed, Kenefick wasn’t without problems.

“I had a big pitchpole just before the start of Race 1 and ripped the cleat for my ride-height control line right off the deck,” said Kenefick, who holds 13th place overall with 30 points. “I had to stop during the first upwind leg and tie the line off and I limped around the course for both races.”

Goodison didn’t suffer any breakdowns today but one of his main rivals, Iain Jensen of Australia, did. Jensen led Goodison around the first lap of Race 1, heightening the intrigue as to which of the veteran Mothists is faster.

On the second upwind leg, however, Jensen’s boom vang (the line that controls the height of the outboard end of the boom) broke. He managed to salvage a fifth in the race but then missed the second race because he returned to shore to make a repair in the hopes of returning for the third race. By that point the wind had increased and the race committee decided to postpone the rest of the day’s schedule.

“We had a good race going in the first one,” said Goodison of his duel with Jensen. “We were about the same at the first windward mark. I just got past him on the run and then had a bit of a splash down and he got past me at leeward gate. I didn’t see what happened to him on the next upwind leg, but after that I sailed pretty well.”

The course axis for both races was set at 330 degrees at a length of 1.1 nautical miles. In each race the fleet mostly took to the left side of the course. While it seemed like the water was flatter on that side, the decision to go left was out of a desire to minimise manoeuvers.

“When it’s so windy, the fewer tacks the better,” said Diaz de Leon, who holds fifth overall with 10 points. “People were mostly thinking start and go to the layline. It’s risky to tack because you don’t want to flip, and a lot of people were flipping.

“I felt good about my tacking today,” Diaz de Leon continued.” Most of my tacks were pretty nice and I think I made big gains. When you’re small you have to have good boathandling to go as fast as the big guys.”

Racing is scheduled to continue tomorrow with a forecast that calls for winds of 12 to 20 knots.

The final round of the five regatta series was held in Sydney over the weekend of 24 -25 March with Euroflex taking out the regatta, as well as the series and winning the inaugural Ben Lexcen Trophy. Tech2 was a close second, with Pavement third, followed by Record Point, iD intranet and Kleenmaid last.

Nathan Outteridge, Glenn Ashby from Euroflex, and Luke Parkinson from tech2 chatted with us about their success and the challenges of sailing the SuperFoiler.

2018 Bacardi Moth World Championship

An international fleet featuring the reigning two-time world champion Paul Goodison of the U.K. is set to contend the Bacardi Moth World Championship next week on Bermuda’s Great Sound.

Hosted by the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and co-organized with the International Moth Class Association, the 77th running of the Moth Worlds is scheduled Mar. 26-Apr. 1. Prior to that the Bermuda Moth National Championship will be staged Mar. 23-24.

The Moth is a high-performance dinghy measuring 3.355m (11 feet) in length and 2.250m (7.3 feet) in beam. The hull weight ranges between 10-20kg (22-44 pounds) and it is equipped with hydrofoils that raise the hull out of the water in winds as light as 5 knots. The ideal windspeed is 8 to 12 knots, which enables the Moth to sail at 15 to 20 knots boatspeed. To watch a Moth sail past at 20 knots is to hear nothing but the sound of the wand that controls the ride height skipping off the wave tops.

Development in the class is largely open, meaning that the sailor can tinker with aspects such as the rig, hydrofoils, sail and fairleads. Sailors will spend hours determining the best lead for a control line so that it’s led to their fingertips while they’re hiking off the rack. Sailors have also been known to spend significant amounts of time redesigning the all-important hydrofoils, playing with the aspect ratio to induce more lift and reduce drag.

Paul Goodison, a member of the Artemis Racing Team for the America’s Cup last summer in Bermuda, won the Worlds last year in Italy and two years ago in Japan. He won the 2017 Worlds by a comfortable 20 points and the 2016 Worlds by a scant 3 points. Through the two victories Goodison has racked up seven race wins and 20 top-3 finishes in 24 starts.

He comes into the regatta as the decided favourite and hopes to lay waste to this year’s fleet with a new implement of destruction. Goodison took delivery of a new Kevin Ellway-designed Exocet Moth built by Maguire Boats of the U.K. at the end of January. He describes the boat as the same one with which he won the past two Worlds but with a potentially devastating development.

“It has a steeper wing bar in an effort to gain righting moment,” said Goodison. “It’s harder to sail because the angle of the bar is so steep that I’m not sliding across side-to-side like on the old boat. It’s more of an uphill/downhill action, but the benefit is more straight-line speed.”

Goodison has an added advantage in his bag of tricks: local knowledge. With Artemis Racing Goodison was a member of the weather team and he spent days on Bermuda’s Great Sound taking wind and current readings in the vicinity of where the Moth Worlds racecourse is expected to be set.

“It depends on where the race committee puts the racecourse, but I should know the area. I spent a lot of days out there,” said Goodison.

The international fleet of 45 entries includes Australians Iain Jensen and Tom Slingsby, who placed 3rd and 4th, respectively, at the 2017 Worlds, and Matt Struble of the U.S., who won the U.S. Nationals two weeks ago. The fleet counts 12 entries from Great Britain, eight from the United States and four each from Australia and Bermuda. Entries have also been received from Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland. Eight sailors are racing for the Master’s title and there is one entry each for the Women’s and Youth divisions.

“The quality of the fleet is extremely high. There are some very good sailors here,” said James Doughty, President of the Bermuda Moth Class Association. “The invitationals a couple of years ago helped show the sailors how nice it is racing in Bermuda. Everyone enjoys the island and the conditions on the water.”

This is the first time that the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club has hosted the Moth Worlds. Previously it hosted Moth Invitationals in 2015 and 2016. The success of those regattas led to the Moth Class awarding the Worlds to the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

Two West Australian skippers have steered their teams to the podium in their home regatta with Perth’s Luke Parkinson (tech2) and Steve Thomas (Pavement) climbing onto the Busselton dais alongside Kleenmaid. tech2 secured a third victory of the regatta to claim the outright win by the slenderest of margins over Pavement.

“I loved the opportunity to be back sailing in WA over the weekend. We had a full range of conditions and this win puts us in great shape for the final in Sydney,” said Busselton’s victorious skipper Luke Parkinson – who thrust tech2 to the top for the very first time.

“It has been a pleasure to sail in such a beautiful location, extremely tight racing it went all the way to the last run of the last race. I am really excited for the Grand Final in Sydney,” said tech2’s mainsheet hand Ayden Menzies.

In what was the most hotly contested regatta to date, Pavement finished four points behind in second.

“Pretty cool for WA to get on top at the home venue. I guess we had a lot of local knowledge,” said Pavement skipper and second on the podium Steve Thomas, “We were stoked to get second – it was a really close race between us and Kleenmaid.”

The regatta also witnessed the breakthrough podium for Olivia Price, Harry Morton and Josh McKnight – who missed out on claiming overall points by just one win. “As a team we’ve been playing the long game, slowly developing our techniques with Sydney being the end goal so this was a really important regatta for us to peak at,” said Kleenmaid mainsheet hand Josh McKnight.

The wash-up is Euroflex’s stranglehold on the championship has slipped after her last placed finish, although her star crew of Nathan Outteridge, Iain Jensen and Glenn Ashby still hold a two-point lead over tech2. It sets up a thrilling climax to the opening series with the Expr3ss! SuperFoiler Grand Final – Sydney from 23 to 25 March, 2018, to decide the first winner of the Ben Lexcen Trophy.